Inch by Inch

My mama used to tell me this......

" inch by inch life's a cinch, yard by yard life is hard"

It's true. When looking to PCS anywhere, the yard view is likely to leave you bummed, overwhelmed, and maybe just exhausted! Learning to navigate the system, and then getting a timeline is helpful.

Today I had three teeth extracted. This is not an optional thing if we want to get base clearance. It was an inch!!!! I was a tad nervous. They put me to sleep, and it was a breeze!

Last week I had a root canal, and a meeting with an oral surgeon. Then we spent FOUR glorious hours almost at the base hospital for immunizations. YEP!!!! Our prior doctor had put our records in storage after going bankrupt and was unreachable. So my precious kids had to get ALLLL their shots redone for the last about 4-5 years. It felt like a yard,  but knocking out all the little things one at a time is a good thing.

Baby Steps in Moving

I am on week three of knowing we have orders....we had a lovely 8 month notice on moving because my husband is deployed.

So far I have learned that we must have all dental work cared for now. That meant I had something like 15 fillings ( I had put off the dentist for several years after some pricey dental work went south) in 24 hours. I have to go to an oral surgeon and have another visit for a root canal next week, too! I had not anticipated the cost of this when I said yes to Japan. A lot of people don't get choices, they just get told they are going. I'm thankful for the advanced notice I had, but the perhaps several thousand out of pocket to get to the point I need to have dental clearance  has  bothered me.

I've been trying to decide to try to sell our home or keep it. It's a challenge. The market is awful where we live, it's as if the housing collapse just now made it here. We can carry our mortgage if we need to, so that's a blessing. But I don't want to carry it for 3 years. We have rented our home out in the past with extreme success, but the rental market is rather bad here as well. So it appears we might take a monthly loss, which stinks!

Moving to Okinawa, Japan has one advantage...in the Marine Corps we are not able to take our household furniture. They supply that for the duration of our stay. So we ::might:: try to sell our home mainly furnished. After 3 years in storage, plus the monthly loss a rental would cost us, it's not a bad deal for us. Then we could save and get all new things when we return!

PCS Info

I've moved 10 times in my life as a military wife. I've been married 16 years, so that's a lot of moving. I've done moves alone, across country, and with babies in tow. One thing I know is in the military you ***MUST*** get good information. Go to the real source...that's not friends, of coworkers, or random spots on the interent! Those are good places to get ideas, but for 100% reliable info, go to the Military resources.

I have read things that contradict each other on going to Japan, all from military families. For Marines, MCCS has loads of resources. Go to Military One Source also. The biggest official resource I found for Okinawa was MCCSOKINAWA...the welcome aboard package is available online...over 100 pages of information!

I am going to share my pcs experience, but there are a lot of specific factors to each situation one must research from reliable Military resources.

Orders to Okinawa Japan!

We are not half way currently through a deployment. My husband is deployed, and will be back in Feburary! We had a exciting line of events recently......

1----a few weeks ago the monitor informed us we would not move for about 1.5-2 years. I was READY to move, but tried to be content.

2-----a few days later the monitor asked my hubby if he was interested in moving to Okinawa. He in turn messaged me to ask if I wanted to (he is in Korea currently)  To our amazement, I said yes almost instantally! This entire process from the monitor asking, to us saying yes took under 15 min! The wonders of the web!

3----In less than 24 hours he had orders issued. 3 years to Japan.

4----I began researching and was shocked that this, our 10th home move, was going to be so different from our others! I had no idea now much there would be to do! It felt a bit overwhelming!